Colour and shape form the spine of Olga de la Iglesia’s vivid photography

Minimalist elements combined with everyday objects form the backdrop of Olga de la Iglesia’s photography work. Enthused by everything we’ve created around us, she sees the mundane as a tool to create fascinating colourful imagery. “Human eyes see in colour. Through them, we understand reality by interpreting the way light comes down on every object, material, plant or being,” explains Olga. “This process alone is something that’s incredibly inspiring for me.”

With an approach that consists of a pure, authentic and vivid style, Olga manages to find extraordinary details in the arbitrary realities of day-to-day life. “Things out of their ordinary place capture my attention. I always love finding weird things in public spaces and things in spaces they don’t belong,” she tells It’s Nice That. “For me, taking a photograph is like painting a picture. It’s about conveying the exact quantity of shape, colour and texture,” she says.

Another wing of incentive comes from her wanderings to “faraway places”; since her childhood, Olga has been enticed by the diverse nature of other cultures. “Noticing all the differences between my world and the diversity of other cultures gave me a new perspective – it widened my imagination and shaped my being,” she explains. “I feel inspired by humans and by everything we’ve created around us. I feel inspired by those tools that help us to create other tools, by those spaces where we stand and live, and by the way we behave towards each other and towards ourselves. I feel inspired by how we are controlled by rectangular pieces of paper and rounded metal coins; by the way money rules our lives. All of this stems from colours and shapes.”

Complementary shades and punchy hues are pinnacle throughout Olga’s work. “Colours were there since the very beginning. They helped evolution by allowing us to identify, classify and connect with our emotions. In every culture, colour stands for a diverse feeling, meaning, emotion, pride, memory and habit. Still, they physically are the same to our eyes. The only thing that changes is the visual code we use to understand them.”

In photographer Grégory Michenaud’s ongoing project he explores Jewish identity, which takes him on a journey inside religion, family values and history. The project is inspired by an old Jewish tradition that’s not practised anymore, called “Yibbum” or levirate marriage, and it obliges the oldest surviving brother of a man who dies childless to marry the widow of his childless deceased brother.

If you Google image search Curacao, a Dutch island in the Caribbean, you’re met with a landscape of white sandy beaches sitting next to rows of pastel coloured architecture. The combination isn’t common, but as photographer Gilleam Trapenberg explains, “Curacao is an island of paradoxes”.

By toying with light and texture, photographer Marta Serrano’s latest series Enter my Dreams depicts the sensual existence of an intimate world presented through the lens. Each image tells a soft and poetic narrative that resonates with us all, leaving a sense of familiarity, wonder and empathy towards a male stranger.

Photographer Anna Beeke’s series At Sea is an ongoing exploration of American cruise culture. “The once romantic notion of travelling the ocean to distant lands has become an accessible and affordable way to vacation, with more and more people taking to the seas each year,” says Anna. “Cruising is the fastest growing sector of the tourism industry worldwide – this project takes a lighthearted look at what it is like to be a passenger on board these floating hotels and the places to which they take us.”

When photographer Michael Bodiam and sculptor Andrew Stellitano set out to collaborate, Michael happened to be reading In Praise of Shadows by iconic Japanese author Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. “It’s a short read but it’s packed with fascinating and inspiring observations,” Michael describes. “For me, the most captivating are when he explains how and why the beauty of certain surfaces, materials and objects can become elevated when viewed in near darkness.”

Russia-born photographer Nadia Sablin uses the medium to investigate “the relationship between documentary and fictional storytelling and explores the larger world through close personal narratives”. An example of this is Together and Alone a poignant series she completed as a graduate thesis project while studying an MFA at Arizona State University. The result is a series of photographs that stunningly document life in a way that is familiar, but still leave you with a sense of something peculiar.